Honoring the price of freedom
May 31, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 6 Comments
Over at katdish’s blog today, I have a story about a man I’ve known most of my life. He’s going to talk, not me. I just listened.
You may disagree with some or even all of what he says, and that’s fine. That’s your right. He’d be the first to say that, too. But he’d also be the first to say that part of the reason why you have that right is because of people like him, and you won’t be able to disagree with that.
Before you leave, I invite you to click on the video above (you may want to grab a tissue or two beforehand). Today’s a holiday for many of us. Whatever you do, I hope you have fun. I also hope that at some point you pause to remember those who have given everything so you can have something.
Father, daughter, Barbie and Ken
May 28, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 39 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
I received an invitation over the weekend to participate in a writing project for my friend Marcus Goodyear as a sort of celebration for his new book of poetry (to take a peek yourself, click here ). The subject matter I was asked to write about?
Barbies.
Now you might think it would be quite a stretch for a guy like me to write about something like that, what with the cowboy hat and all. But you’d be wrong. I’ve been wanting to write about Barbies for quite a while.
I have a lot of experience with Barbies. Blame my daughter.
At eight, she’s closing in on that age when boys become interesting instead of gross. There has already been a few notes passed to her behind the teacher’s back. Last February, several Valentines with her name on them found their way into her school books. There’s even been one attempted phone call from a boy.
(A sad case, that. Poor boy was scared to death and promised to never call again. That’s what happens when you call a girl and her father happens to answer the phone instead.)
Handling this sort of situation is a tricky affair. On the one hand, laying down the law would be great for me. Not so much for her. And on the other hand, letting things be would be contrary to every impulse in my fatherly bones.
I had to find a way to get my point across without alienating her. I had to reach, not preach.
Enter the Barbies.
She’d been asking me to play Barbies with her for years, but I’d always managed to slip away. Chores to do, things to write, that sort of thing. As a boy, rule number one was that men do not play with dolls. But then the passed notes happened, then the Valentines, then the phone call, and, well…
So now I’m Ken. Preppy surfer who’s likely always gotten his way through good looks and rich parents. Drives a corvette and always has that come-hither smile plastered on his face. And, of course, infatuated with a very beautiful but physically disproportioned certain someone.
In the privacy of the living room floor, my daughter and I play. There are equal parts tension and reverie. Barbie and Ken fight, then make up, then fight again. They go on dates and pass notes to each other and plan an elaborate wedding. Between you and me, I still don’t get much out of it. I’m a guy. Dolls scare me. My daughter, though? She’s in heaven. And I’m hoping she’s paying attention as much as she’s playing.
Because preppy rich-boy Ken isn’t so much. Not when he’s in my hands. He’s kind and considerate to the woman he loves (or, as I put it to my daughter, “Crushin’ on”). He holds the door to the corvette open for her. He holds her hand and nothing else. He’s patient and waits while she gets ready because he knows she’s worth waiting for. They fight, yes. But it’s never bad and never for long and things are always better afterwards.
Ken sees Barbie as an equal in most things and as someone a little better in others. He protects her and keeps her safe from the toy soldiers my son often ambushes us with. And he is the epitome of self-restraint.
“How come Ken never kisses Barbie?” she’s asked me.
“Because they aren’t married yet,” I say. “That’s the rules. You always have to mind the rules.”
Playtime with a subtle warning thrown in.
How much good this will do is something I suppose I’ll have to wait to see. Life is all about choices, and it doesn’t matter if you’re eight or eighty. At some point, she’ll have to make her own.
But I’m hoping that on some faraway day when a real-life someone takes her on a date, she’ll remember playing with her father on the living room floor. And she’ll start thinking of herself as Barbie and her date as Ken, and she’ll remember the rules and the fact that they have to mind them.
And maybe she’ll measure the person she’s with against the person who taught her the rules in the first place.
I hope so. The bar’s high, no doubt.
As it should be.
I just couldn’t help myself
May 26, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 41 Comments
Scene I
My family is at Target doing a little post-report card shopping. Both kids have a grand total of fifteen dollars to spend, courtesy of thirty days worth hard studying, good grades, and not getting into trouble.
They stroll the toy aisles with daddy in tow, trying to decide what to buy and lamenting the rising price of Matchbox cars and Barbies. Inflation, I tell them. They don’t know what that word means, but they shake their heads in disgust like tiny adults.
My daughter decides on one book and one stuffed animal. My son is torn between a new Buzz Lightyear and a Nerf gun. He’s leaning toward the gun. The long-range kind with a scope and a ten-round clip. I nod my approval. Nerf guns are cool.
Scene II
Back home.
Daughter is nestled on the sofa, book and stuffed animal arranged just so on her lap. I am trying to get the Nerf gun out of the package despite one antsy little boy and what appears to be a secret Chinese plot to destroy America by means of thick plastic twist-ties. Ten minutes later, he’s locked and loaded. But before he goes off to stalk invisible bad guys, we need to have a talk.
I bend down so I’ll be at eye level and he can both see and hear me plainly.
“Do…not…shoot…at…anyone,” I say. “Okay?”
“Okay, Daddy.”
“You can shoot at the walls, the windows, your bed, a poster, stuffed animals, Matchbox cars, bedposts, chairs, and tables. But no people.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
“Good. Now what did I say?”
“You said I can’t shoot my new gun at nobody.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
Scene III
Ten minutes later, my daughter screams. Not the I-saw-a-bug kind, either. The other kind. The painful kind. I find her in the hallway holding a hand over an eye, the victim of a long-range headshot.
She’s sent back to the sofa with a washcloth over her wound, and I round up the usual suspect.
“Did you shoot your sister?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember what I told you about shooting people?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not good enough.”
He pauses, carefully weighing the pros and cons of telling the truth versus telling me what he thinks I want to hear. He opts for the former.
“I just couldn’t help myself,” he says.
True maybe, but not good enough. He should know better. Couldn’t help himself? Really? I fight the urge to hang my head in shame. Not for him, but for me. I should be raising him better. I should be teaching him to control himself and obey the rules. I should be teaching him to be a man.
“Maybe you should go and sit on the porch for a while,” I tell him. “Get some air and think about what you’ve done.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
And off he goes to swing and think and listen to the birds. I take the Nerf gun and put it somewhere safe, where he can’t reach it.
Scene IV
My son is still on the porch swinging and thinking. He’s not alone, though. I’m keeping company beside him.
He knows why I’m there. I told him. Told him that I intended to take the Nerf gun and put it somewhere safe, and that I was actually doing that very thing. But then his mother decided to do some laundry. She bent over to gather some dirty clothes into the basket and…well, let’s just say my son gets his aim honest.
“I just couldn’t help myself,” I tell him.
He offers me an understanding nod and says, “Tough, ain’t it?”
“Yep.”
So we swing, my bare feet pushing us forward and back and his hanging off the edge. Two men trying to figure out why they do the things they sometimes do. We talk about it for a bit. Just a bit. Because in the end we both decide that everyone screws up, which is bad, but that we still love each other even when we do, which is good.
And that God still loves us both, which is best.
Time for Class
May 24, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 9 Comments
- image courtesy of photobucket.com
‘Tis the season for moving up and moving on, whether it be from high school into college or college into the real world. It’s a wonderful time, an exciting time.
A scary time.
Of course, all that fear is quietly set aside in the midst of all the celebration. There’s so much to look back on that you can afford to pick and choose what you see in front of you. To the graduates from the college where I work, what’s in front of them seems bright and cheery and full of promise.
A case in point.
The other day I overheard a graduating senior say this:
“I can’t wait to start real life!”
A part of me is glad that we weren’t in close enough proximity for her to hear me laugh at that. Would’ve been rude on m part. But a part of me is a little sad, too. If either of us were closer, maybe we would have gotten the opportunity to sit and talk for a while. I would have gotten the chance to congratulate her on her hard work and accomplishment. And then I would have said that school isn’t really over for her at all.
Oh, no. School is just beginning.
But since we both missed out on that conversation, I thought I’d write about it instead over at katdish’s website. Feel free to scoot on over there and read it. And to all you graduates out there, let me say congratulations. You’ve earned it. Now put down your pencils, clean out your lockers, and get ready. Real life is here. And there aren’t many grades anymore. Most of real life is pass or fail.
Mike and Sarah
May 21, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 37 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
Mike and Sarah, two friends of mine, celebrated their wedding anniversary last week. Ten years and going strong. They’re the type of couple who seem to belong with one another. More than partners and lovers and best friends, they’re as deeply in love with one another as they were those many years ago.
Their time together hasn’t always been wonderful. There have been bumps in the road. Mike lost his job eight years ago and struggled to find new work. What he eventually found paid far less than what they were used to. Three years ago, Sarah miscarried their first child. They’re still trying (and succeeding) to put that behind them. In between were bills that went unpaid, the deaths of Sarah’s mother and Mike’s sister, and a flooded home.
Like I said, not wonderful.
However.
If you talked to them, you might just be led to think otherwise. Mike and Sarah shrug off their troubles. No big deal, they say. Stuff happens to everyone. And while that’s true, it could easily be said that the sort of stuff that happens to them doesn’t really happen to everyone, at least not so clumped together. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say all that bad would put a strain on even the strongest relationship. But Mike and Sarah have not only endured, they’ve grown closer in the process.
Ask them why, and their answer might surprise you. It isn’t their shared faith, though that’s certainly a major factor in their marital success. It isn’t some fostered hope of a better future that’s waiting just around the bend, either.
No, the answer is a much simpler one. One that was learned ten years ago on their wedding day.
Sarah began planning her wedding when she was eight years old. That’s not an exaggeration. Every girl wants to be a princess on her big day, and every girl deserves to be. Sarah was no exception. So when Mike proposed, the wheels of fate and twenty years worth of dreams became a freight train that couldn’t be stopped.
There were literally hundreds of flowers. Ten bridesmaids. An orchestra. A choir. Wine. Dancing. Enough candles to turn evening into noon.
It was the sort of affair that demanded remembrance. That part worked. Because there is no doubt everyone will remember Mike and Sarah’s wedding.
It began innocently enough. There was music, then the groom and his party, then the bridesmaids, and then Sarah, making that walk down the aisle with her father that she’d always dreamed.
Little did she or anyone know that at that very moment, Mike burped. And it wasn’t the normal sort of excuse-me burp. It was the serious kind. The kind that serves as a prelude to something much more serious.
Mike thought the sweating and shaking he woke up with that morning was nothing more than a case of pre-wedding nerves. No big deal, he thought. But as Sarah took her place beside him, Mike suddenly thought it was a very big deal. Very big.
Because it was there at that moment, in front of Sarah and God and a few hundred onlookers, that Mike could no longer contain what was bubbling up inside of him.
He threw up on his wife-to-be. On her dress, on her hands. And yes, on her face.
Chaos ensued. There were gasps and cries and at least one fit of laughter from the audience. Several of the bridesmaids had to make a quick escape before doing an uncontrollable impression of the groom.
Poor Mike was numb. Not only had he just gotten sick in front of family and friends alike, he’d just yarked on the one woman he loved most in this world, and on the day she’d spent her whole life planning. He was sorry and scared and sick at the same time.
All the attention was focused on the bride. On poor, poor Sarah. Standing there with her arms outstretched and a bit of digested Cheerios dangling from her veil.
She had every right to be upset. Every right to stomp and scream, “NOT FAIR!”
But she didn’t. What she did do was comfort the man she had pledged herself to. She grabbed him before he could stumble, wiped the mess from her eyes, and said, “It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”
The service was postponed while everyone changed and gathered themselves. When the bride and groom walked back down the aisle, it was more of a crawl. She propped him up the whole way.
That was their first lesson in marriage. And it was maybe the most important one.
Because it isn’t all about the fairy tale. There’s a lot of mess involved.
Bringing the Heat
May 19, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 5 Comments
Photo by Claire Burge
Right around this time nine years ago, my wife shared the news that she was pregnant with our first child. And though there was joy (much, much joy), there was also something else. Something I had to keep swallowing lest it spew from every pore of my body.
Fear. I was scared. So scared, in fact, that it nearly shook my soul.
Not that I didn’t feel I was ready to be a father. My wife and I had stable incomes, our own home, and money in the bank; it was as good a time as any. No, the fear was something else. Something deeper.
Kids tend to see their parents as some sort of superhero/sage hybrid. I know I saw my parents as that. My father was the strongest, bravest, toughest man in the world. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. That image of him lasted nearly thirteen years until it shattered one July afternoon.
We were playing ball the way we always did in the backyard where we always did it—me standing with bat in hand in front of the maple tree, him twenty or so feet away near the clothesline. We tossed me batting practice for thirty minutes, lobbing baseball after baseball, until there was only one left in the bucket.
Gonna bring it, he said. He always said that before throwing the last ball. It meant no lobbing. No easy pitch. It was instead extra heat, a blur of white and an angry hiss I could never catch. He always dared me to hit it and I always dreaded him throwing it. Because that heat scared me. It was cowhide-stitched death…
I’m over at highcallingblogs today, so if you’d like you can see the rest of this story here. I will say this was a tough one to write. Subject matter is plentiful when it comes to parenting, but some of those subjects are ones I’m not all together comfortable with. At least not yet. But I’m trying.
The Grace of a Normal Day
May 17, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 44 Comments
It’s 5:30 in the morning. Or, as a friend more poetically puts it, “Oh-dark-thirty.” The alarm has just gone off. It’s one of those programmed to offer the most irritating, high-pitched buzz possible. My first thought it to turn the stupid thing off before it wakes everyone else. My second is that I need to find something—anything—that will wake me a little more calmly. Getting jolted straight from sleep to awake can’t be good for you. It just can’t be.
The clock is slapped and hit and thrown until the noise stops, and I settle back into bed to take stock. I’m awake. Awake is good. All of my body parts seem functional with a minimal amount of soreness. Also good.
I already know what the day ahead will bring. I know where I’m going and what I’m doing. I know who I’m going to see and in many cases what exactly they will say to me.
Sure, anything can happen. There are always tiny variations; nothing in life is ever truly fixed. I may choose to alter my schedule a bit and therefore miss someone whose path I usually cross. Or, of course, my schedule may be altered by something other than choice. You never know, as they say. But the truth of it is that we actually do in most cases.
For many of us, life immersed in routine. We get up at the same time and go through the same ceremonial acts of preparing for the day, just as we tend to reverse them to prepare for the end of it. The in between, that time spent out in a chaotic world swimming in chance, is really just as predictable. Sure, bad things happen. But not often. That’s why they always end up on the news.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe your life is the opposite of mine, full of adventure and derring-do. Maybe there isn’t an alarm clock by your bed because you don’t need one. You wake up on your own and fling your covers back, eager to tackle anything—everything!—if for no other reason than because it’s new and unexpected.
Aside from the occasional Saturday, doesn’t happen to me. My life is a long run-on sentence that is only occasionally interrupted by a comma or a dash. And while I hope there’s an exclamation point at the end, I’ll settle for a period.
I say all this not for your pity, because that’s not what I want. I live the quintessential normal life, and most of the time I’m proud of that fact. I say it instead for those few times when I’m not.
Growing up, the sort of life I wanted was one where I would wake up excited to be alive. My mouth would already be salivating over the endless possibilities before me. The world back then wasn’t something to endure, it was something to conquer. And life seemed to stretch out before me rather than close in around me.
We always have big plans for ourselves when we’re young. We’re just cocky and sure enough to think we know what’s going on and what the world is really about.
That doesn’t last long, of course. Things change. Not just our dreams. Not just our perceptions of life, either. Our perceptions of other things change as well. About three years ago I woke up just like I did a few minutes ago—5:30 a.m. on the button. And I beat the alarm clock into submission and took stock of both myself and my life (also just like a few minutes ago), and my perception was this:
I was in hell.
Which meant my perception of hell had changed as well. I always thought hell would be colored with a fiery red. Turned out it was a dull gray instead.
I was lost back then. I had blessings I was blind to and a future that called but couldn’t be heard. That’s what happens when you allow yourself to go numb. You miss the bad, yes. But you miss the good, too.
I’m better now, which is good. But I know that being unhappy with the much that God has blessed you with is a human condition, and if I am one thing, it is most assuredly human.
So as I’m lying here in bed, I’m reminding myself that it’s easy to forget that the ordinary is just the extraordinary that’s happened over and over again.
Sometimes the beauty of your life is apparent. Sometimes you have to go looking for it. And just because you have to look for it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
My exhale is the here-we-go-again sort, but with a smile. And before I throw back the covers, I offer this small prayer:
God, grant me the grace of a normal day.
This post is part of the One Word at a Time blog carnival: Grace. For more stories about grace, please visit my friend Bridget Chumbley at One Word at a Time.
Willsey
May 17, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 5 Comments
The dog made me do it.
The dog’s name, to be more precise. Made me sit back and rock and recall all those times I’d said those two words:
We’ll see.
Said numerous times and in no particular order to myself, my wife, my kids, and my God.
Will this happen? Can we go here? Can I do this?
We’ll see.
There’s a whole lot of power in those two words. A whole lot of confusion, too. It’s part “I hope so” and part “I’m scared” and a whole lot in between.
I met Willsey a few days ago and invite you to do the same over at katdish’s new website. Feel free to stop by. I might see you there.
We’ll see.
Honored with the Ugly
May 14, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 51 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
As far as unwritten rules go, living in the South is much like living in a foreign country. And there are a lot of unwritten rules. Many of them would seem archaic and borderline idiotic to the average outsider, which is one of the many reasons why so many of the small towns that dot the landscape from Virginia to Mississippi would pretty much rather be left alone.
For instance.
It’s imperative that you return a wave. Always. It doesn’t matter if you’re driving through a blizzard and you can’t see out of your windshield and you have two kids screaming in the backseat and you just spilled hot coffee all over yourself. If someone passes you and waves, you’d best wave back.
Same goes for someone holding a door open for you, whether at the grocery store or the bank or the gas station. Again, it doesn’t matter what your mood is or what you’re carrying or what you’re not. Walk through and say thank you. Refuse, and your risks run from the small (being politely put in your place) to the large (being called a liberal).
At no time are these rules more important than when visiting a stranger’s home. Always answer yes when asked if you’d like something to drink, because no visit is a real visit without some sweet tea. Always make sure the mud is off your shoes, even when told it doesn’t matter (because it always matters).
And always, always, sit where you’re told to sit.
That last rule almost tripped me up the other day. I was visiting the home of an uncle of a friend, had checked my boots for mud, and had already been given my glass of tea (in a Mason jar, even!). Things were going just fine. Until we all sat down in the living room, anyway.
“Sit here,” the man said.
He pointed not to the sofa or the love seat, but to the recliner. The faded blue one. With the tear in the seat, the coffee stains on the armrests, and the dog hair everywhere.
Sit? Here?
Yes.
And I almost, almost, politely declined. Put me on the floor or against the wall. Put me anywhere but that chair. But I didn’t. Couldn’t. Proper upbringing can be a real pain sometimes.
So I thanked him for his kindness and sat, slow and gentle, knowing both that one quick movement would get me speared by a protruding spring and my wife was going to kill me for getting so much dog hair on my shirt. The seat screeched and moaned, then finally gave way.
“Not bad, huh?” he asked me.
I took a sip of tea.
“Feels great,” I said.
He smiled and nodded, satisfied.
“Had that chair since I got married. First piece of furniture I ever bought new. My wife says it’s a piece of junk and an eyesore, but not me.”
“I think it looks just fine,” I said.
“Comfortable too, huh?”
“Oh yeah. I’m gettin’ sleepy just sitting here.”
“You know that chair’s been right in that spot for near twenty-five years?” he said. “Never been moved. I like it by the window there. Used to hold my boy in that chair when he was a baby. We’d sit there for hours. He’d lie there on my chest and sleep, and I’d just stare at him trying to figure out how someone like me could have a hand in such a miracle as him.”
I sat my jar on the coffee table and settled into the chair, imagining my chair home where I once sat with my own children. And still did.
“I sat in that chair while I waited for him to come home from his first prom. That was a happy time. Sat there the day he came home drunk because his girlfriend had dumped him. That wasn’t such a happy time. I was sitting there when he found his next one though, and I was in that chair when he said he was going to marry her as soon as he got out of the Marines.”
He grew quiet then, stealing a glance toward my friend who sat on the sofa beside him. He sipped his own tea and then cleared his throat.
“I was sittin’ there when they came to tell me he’d died in some town in Iraq, too.”
The room was silent for a long while. It was a holy silence, one offered not just to the sacrifice of the fallen but to the fragility of life.
“I love that chair,” he finally said.
I did, too. It was the most beautiful chair I’d ever seen.
3:12 a.m.
May 12, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 38 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
Me, too. As a matter of fact, I’m doing that right now.
I just looked at the clock—3:12 a.m. Which means if I fall asleep right this second, I’ll have two full hours of rest before I have to get up and get ready for work. Not bad, I figure. I can do that. Not ideal, of course, but I’ve gone on less.
Sleep, I tell myself. But I don’t. I just lie and stare.
I’ve heard some theologians have stated that 3:15 a.m. is a pretty strange time of day. A thin place, they say. When we’ve gotten enough sleep (or lack thereof) and our minds reach a point where they’re more apt to ponder the deeper things in life. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but I have to say it is in this particular case.
Maybe it’s the silence, a quiet that’s so loud it’s nearly deafening. Aside from the occasional hum of the refrigerator down the hall and the rustlings of two children in the beds next door, it’s as if the world has gone away. Nothing exists but me and the ceiling, and since there is nothing outward for my mind to latch onto, it moves inward to those places seldom visited.
Is that why people seem to have a distaste for quiet nowadays? Why they always have to have something on? Because it keeps them focused outward and safely away from their insides?
Yes. I think so.
I’d have more time to ponder my insides, I think to myself, if I had a little less to do. Which steers my thoughts to what the coming day will demand of me, which steers me toward figuring out a way to get it all done.
There’s work, of course. My job. Lots to do there. Busy day coming. Busy day yesterday. Busy year.
Blog post to write. Gotta get that done. Can’t get behind.
Is today the field trip? Or tomorrow? Did my daughter study for her test? She did, right? I think I remember that. Did I pray that she’d get a good grade? She asked me to. Yes. I did. Right?
Grass is getting tall. Gotta mow. Is there gas in the can?
And then there’s an idea for the next book I’m writing. And another idea for a book later on. Can’t forget that. Where’s my notebook? Did I leave it at work?
They’re voices, all of them. Screaming at me all at once and begging for my attention. And I realize that even at three o’clock in the morning, I’m busy. That there is so much to do and my life has become so hectic that I equate sleep and rest to laziness and apathy.
And I realize this, too: I can’t do it anymore.
The busy, I mean.
It’s an unfortunate sign of the times that we equate success and progress to how much we have to do and worry about. The busier we are, the more we’re doing. And the more we’re doing, the more useful we’re being. Right?
Yes, I want to say. Because now is not the time to stop, not even the time to slow down. This are not mere days, I tell myself. No, these days, these times, are The Dream, the culmination of years of work and tears and prayer. This isn’t the time to rest, this is the time to keep pushing.
Right? It’s a question said not to myself, but to the ceiling. And not really to the ceiling.
And there in the silence of my bedroom comes a whisper, one spoken from nowhere and everywhere.
No, it says.
Wrong, it says.
You didn’t get here. I brought you here. You worked, but I moved you. You dreamed, but I breathed life into them. It’s from Me, by Me, and for Me. So let Me. Don’t run ahead, don’t lag behind. Walk with Me. Right here with Me.
I wonder—is it that easy? Is that all we have to do? Trust and walk and obey? Can our rest do more than our work if our rest is in Him?
Yes.
That is all the whisper says and all I hear.
And in the silence and the darkness, I sleep.
Author of Snow Day and Paper Angels (November 2011), both by FaithWords. But don't let that fool you. I'm just as confused as anyone.
And that is fine with me, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is that you never know what you might run into.
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